Sunday, 24 August 2014

The Thames and the Cooum

In the 19th century,
the river Thames that flows through London was a far worse stinking river than
the river Cooum that flows through Madras. Not only the river, but the whole
city of London was the world’s largest dumpyard. Carolyn Steel traces the growth
of the London through its ravenous demand for food, first marched in as cattle
and sheep on hooves and carted in as food by bullock carts and ships.

The Cooum in Chintadiripet

When scientist Chadwick proposed that Thames be cleaned,The Times of
London opposed it vehemently: "England wants to be clean, but not be
cleaned by Chadwick" ran their editorial. So says Peter Medawar in his
book The Limits of Science.

Poor Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria died surrounded by 42 cesspools, and the inconsolable queen then
ordered the cleaning up of London - thus was born the modern sewerage system.
This was the most useful royal death in history, first for England, then the
world. Systematically, the largest metropolis of the post-Industrial Revolution
era, got its first effective sewerage system.

Another factor might be mentioned here – horses. More specifically
horse dung. As Stephen Leavitt explains brilliantly in his book SuperFreakonomics, the modern curse of
Carbon-di-oxide pollution is insignificant compared to the pre-automobile horse-dung
pollution that every European and American city suffered. The tall basements of
stone houses in the US cities of that era – New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and
of similar cities in Europe, owe their design to the deep aversion of the
moneyed classes, who built such residences, to prevent rain mixed sludge,
thoroughly enriched with horse and human refuse, from entering their homes. In
a remarkable connection, the houses of Bohra Muslims in Siddhpur, a city in
Gujarat, were built on the designs of the European houses of the time – and
reflect the high basements of such houses.

Bohra houses in Siddhpur, Gujarat - with high basements

Environmentalists mindlessly curse the internal combustion engine, and the modern mechanical world, as the root of all pollution, and as evil incarnate. I have already written about how
vital Diesel and Benz’s automobile was to improving farming, citing Matt
Ridley. Curse softly, dear Anti-carbon Totalitatarians.

Thomas Hager, in his book on the synthesis of nitrogen, The Alchemy of Air, vividly describes cargo ships
carrying mountaints of guano– bat and bird dung from Pacific islands off the
Peruvian coast, arriving at the ports of England. This worsened the smell. London was steadily getting dirtier and smellier well before the Industrial Revolution, and dumping its untreated sewage and trash into the Thames worsened things - in fact, the Great Stink of 1858 caused Parliament to shift from London to Oxford. (If only Muhammad bin Thugluq had such a terrific excuse!)

The word malaria comes from
the Latin word “mal” and “air”, since scientists at one time believed that the
disease was caused by the bad air, as the effects of the anopheles mosquito was
unknown then.

Most readers of English
literature may be familiar with the satires of Charles Dickens of the soot and
terrible pollution of London, or the more popular depictions of street boys in
the Sherlock Holmes stories. What we generally don’t think about or realize, is
that such a London no longer exists - though, apparently, the Thames is getting worse. It is a far cleaner, far less polluted
metropolis, a beacon for financiers, fashionistas, artists and crony
capitalists. That is a lesson for the dirty cities of the world.

I cannot resist pointing out at
this point the single most repeated thing about the Indus Valley Civilization –
they had the most advanced sewerage systems of the world until the 19th
century, have a better system
than most cities and villages in India. On our January 2014 site visit of Tamil Heritage Trust to Lothal, we were given a tour of the drainage systems of that Harappan city. Sewage is disgusting as current affairs, but apparently fascinating as heritage!

Septic tank in Lothal

Sewage treatment system and drains, Lothal

As Sriram V elucidated to some of us on a
Chintadripet Heritage Walk, it was during Lord Hobart’s Governorship of Madras
Presidency, that the plan for a sewerage system for Madras germinated. In fact,
Lord Hobart’s death was as useful to Madras, as Prince Albert’s was to England.